


Vigil

by orphan_account



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Bedside Vigils, Brief mention of Cannibalism, Family, Friendship/Love, Gen, Major Character Injury, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 08:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11870622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: They take turns sitting at his bedside, swapping in and out in volunteer shifts, the dedicated vigil of a family for one of their own. -- or: love, plain and simple.





	Vigil

**Author's Note:**

> This went from vigil to tapestry to vigil, but I'm okay with that. Hope you enjoy!

They take turns sitting at his bedside, swapping in and out in volunteer shifts, the dedicated vigil of a family for one of their own.

 

* * *

 

Angela is first, warmth and kindness, whose words paint pictures to cover the memory of the explosion and give him something beautiful if useless to focus on. She’s there to press the button for medicine when he asks, she’s there to watch him doze off as relief crosses his face, and she’s there to see him jolt awake, eyes open wide, body tense.

She’s there to watch him deal with the pain and to tell him about her first trip to Paris, to feel a tug in her heart when he gives a hint of a smile, to push the hair off his face when it gets in his eyes.

 

* * *

 

Next is Hodgins, laughter and life, who sees the circles under Zack’s eyes and the frown cutting grooves into his face. The nightmares, Zack says, are worse than the pain, but Hodgins hears the rough notes in his best friend’s voice, the harmony of exhaustion and stabbing aches, of shards of glass upon his skin, heat searing his flesh in its search for bone.

This bitter time is better spent under the gentle weight of sedatives, and the press of a button sets loose their quiet song, and Hodgins bites back the urge to speak. What more can he say that will add to what he already has? His voice will shake and catch, and Zack won’t hear it anyway.

Hodgins’s shift is quiet and tense, brother watching over brother, the air heavy with an unspoken vow to catch the monster in the city.

 

* * *

 

Booth stops by for a visit, staying long enough for Hodgins to buy a coffee from downstairs.

“I know you don’t believe in God,” Booth says to Zack, who is deep in the medicine’s hold, dead to the world and yet alive, so alive, “but it never hurts to pray. So.”

He makes the Sign of the Cross and says a quick Our Father and a Hail Mary, eyes closed to the sight of a man who looks more like a boy now than in the entire time Booth has known him.

“Now you do your part,” Booth says once he’s finished. “Have faith in... biology, or doctors, or the medicine. Whatever it is you believe in.” He pauses and glances out into the hall, and then he finishes quietly, “You’re like everyone’s kid brother. Hang in there, all right?”

Zack, of course, does not respond, but Booth knows he has heard him somehow.

Hodgins comes back with coffee and some dubious-looking breakfast wrap, and Booth heads off to start another day of looking for Gormogon.

 

* * *

 

Sweets doesn’t know Zack well at all, but he still feels sympathy for what he’s going through; so for the team’s sake as well as Zack’s, he takes a short shift at his bedside while Cam goes to get the book she left in her car.

“It’ll take time to recover from the burns,” he says to Zack. “It’ll take longer to adapt to the limitations you’ll face as far as sensitivity and—”

“You’re trying to tell me that I can go to you for therapy,” Zack states. He doesn’t seem annoyed, and he doesn’t seem curious. He is hard to read, but he is always clear when he opposes something.

“Yes, I am.”

Zack nods. “It won’t matter.”

“Therapy? It will. It _can_. I’m willing to work with—”

“I meant my injuries. My recovery, my limitations. None of it will matter.”

Sweets frowns slightly. “Why do you say that?”

“Because he can more than make do with what he’s got,” says Cam. Sweets turns to look at her—she’s standing at the door, book in hand, a firm, fond smile on her face as she regards Zack. He is one of hers. The explosion may have shaken them all, but it has pulled them closer together, too.

Sweets nods and shoots them both a smile, offering a quick good-bye as he leaves to get back to work.

 

* * *

 

“I have to get back to the lab soon,” Brennan says as she takes the seat at Zack’s bedside. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“Not much better or worse than yesterday,” Zack replies.

“As expected.” She reaches out and sets a hand on his forearm. His skin is warm against hers, the hospital gown and blankets keeping him as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. His bandages are clean, and the smell of the materials used to clean his burns lingers in the air, soothing her mind though they mean that he has only just begun to walk the path of recovery.

She will walk it with him, see him through the best and worst of it and everything in between. She’ll be at his side until he’s comfortable again, until he finds a new way to work just as well as before, or even better. He’ll be better than her someday. No injury will stop him.

“We’re going to find who did this to you,” she tells him, voice soft as a breeze in summer, warm yet refreshing.

Zack shuts his eyes and nods. The sight tugs at her insides. Whoever hurt him, she will see that the justice system makes them hurt worse.

“I have to go,” she says, giving his arm a gentle squeeze as she stands. Like when they first brought him here, she kisses his forehead before she leaves, as if that simple act can give him courage and strength and hope. Angela told her two years ago that a touch can convey more than words.

Brennan believes her. As she leaves, she feels as if a part of her rips and tears with every step. In the metaphorical tapestry of her life, Zack is woven in deep, and to lose him would be to come undone.

 

* * *

 

Cam reads him things she doesn’t understand. The complex math keeps his mind active, draws his attention away from the pain. When she first met him, he’d been a boyish intern with floppy hair and casual attire, hardly a candidate for a full-time position with the lab. Now he’s more than proven himself, helped salvage a case that was almost disastrous for them, all while remaining the Zackaroni who’d charmed her from the first moment she’d seen him.

“You really are amazing,” she says, shaking her head down at the book in her lap, half a smile on her face. “I’d hate to be up against you in court.”

“You never will be.”

“I’ll do my damnedset not to be.”

“Your sense of morality is too strong for you to murder someone.”

“Not strong enough that I wouldn’t be tempted to punch the person who hurt you.”

“ _Tempted_ ,” Zack repeats, meeting her gaze. “That’s not bad. It’s good enough. It means that you care, despite my—”

“No ‘despite’ about it, Zackaroni,” Cam cuts across him, smile growing wider when a small grin tugs back his mouth. “Except the experiments you and Hodgins like to do.”

“We ask you for permission now before we do anything,” Zack half protests, half reminds her.

“And that’s the way it’s going to stay.” She gives him her best fake-stern look, eyebrows raised high, grin smaller and smugger.

He holds her gaze for a second, and then he’s back to staring at his bandages, no trace of amusement left on his face.

Cam lets her smile drop and gives a quiet sigh. “Next section,” she tells him, looking back down at the book, and starts to read for him again.

 

* * *

 

Hearts can’t crack, and in fact, hearts do not cause people to feel emotions. The heart’s involvement in emotional reactions is to beat faster or harder in response to the hormones released into the blood, the chemical mixture that informs the way the body behaves in a given situation. The heart is a muscle that can be crushed but not broken, torn into but not shattered.

If Brennan didn’t know the facts from the popular imagination’s fictions, though, she’d say her heart broke the moment she solved the puzzle of the mandible.

She touches her forehead to Zack’s as the flaw in Gormogon’s logic undoes his commitment to the monster’s sinister cause, watches him from up close as he closes his eyes and takes a shaky breath and lets himself see the truth. She feels him frown against her skin, sees the tears fall down his cheeks, and wants nothing in the world more than to hunt the man who hurt him.

But that’s Booth’s job, and hers, by choice, is to stay at Zack’s side so he knows that this is not the end. Not of their friendship, not of her admiration of his brilliant mind, not of his place in her life. He was wooed by the words of a man who knew the right lies to tell him, but he took the right steps when the secret came out and the illusion was shattered by the irrational, by his metaphorical heart and the attachments he formed because of it. He told them where the monster performed his twisted rites, and Booth fired the shot that ended his evil tradition.

Zack did not eat human flesh, so Caroline secures his fate, keeping him somewhere safer than prison until he shows he improves. It’s the best anyone could hope for, but it’s still a hard yank on the thread in the tapestry.

Brennan watches through the glass until their gazes meet, a silent good-bye as the dust begins to settle.

 

* * *

 

“I never gave him anything,” Brennan all but weeps, sitting on the stairs to the Gormogon vault.

Booth reads her the letter that proves her wrong, and she leans on him for what feels like the millionth time since they became partners three years ago.

She’ll recover; she’ll reweave the tapestry stronger than before. Irrational though emotional attachments may be, they keep the threads together and help them withstand the worst.

That’s the gift she gave Zack, in the end. Not an internship, but a family of friends and colleagues, a home that’ll always have a place for him. They may hire another intern, but they will never forget him, his post in their midst guarded as faithfully as the vigil they kept at his bedside.


End file.
